Hey Iorek, do you know if Brown's receptive to letters telling them about our interest in the school? I just interviewed down there and was very impressed with it, and it really is on the top of my list now in spite of its slightly lower ranking compared to some of the other schools I'm interviewing at. Do you think it's a bad idea to send a letter telling them that?
Yah, of course! Barbara would likely be the best person to send them directly to (either by physical mail or email). The process is as (if not much more) hectic for the admissions staff as it is for everyone applying but I remember when I sent mine, she was prompt to send a kind email reply. I'm guessing you already sent out your interviewer thank you letters? Regardless, a well crafted interest letter is never going to hurt you so long as you don't send a thousand of them. Some schools like to see them as much as once a month, other schools you only really need to send one. I only sent out my thank you letters but I really took the time to make sure they conveyed the exact sentiment I wanted and they were fairly lengthy (filled a page and I think I had to fiddle with the margins). This goes without saying but just in case, be sure to send thank you letters to people aside from your interviewers (admissions admins, tour guides, etc). A lot of people put hard work into making sure your interview day goes smoothly.
I'm guessing you know this but as a general rule of thumb that I agree with, I was always told to avoid mentioning other schools in general and deffinately not to make any specific comparisons in interest letters. They know you're a competitive candidate and have therefore been interviewing at several top institutions around the country. Just be authentic and as detailed as possible with what draws you here. In my interest letters I tended to talk about the students I met and the inspiration I drew from their accomplishments. Med schools are rightfully proud of their students and since medicine is a collaborative enterprise, its deeply encouraging to realize how talented and just plain nice your potential future peers are.
I also had to make the choice of choosing between several well ranked institutions, including ones higher ranked than Brown in U.S. News and while outside of second look you don't really talk about the other med schools you've been accepted to, I know several classmates who made similar choices. After the past few months here, I'm pretty thrilled that I made the right choice. Everyone has their own priorities; my advice is to find a school with happy students since despite the masochism that drives us all into medicine, you really should be able to enjoy this experience (and try to see if you can talk with 3rd and 4th years especially since a lot of second looks only really give you the chance to interact with 1st and 2nd year students).
Also, I really advise anyone reading this to take a thorough look at the match list for each school you're interviewing at or considering an acceptance from. Some schools post theirs online and here is Brown's 2011 list (
http://brown.edu/academics/medical/about/match). You used to be able to access the list going several years back but since they completely redid the website, I'm guessing they didn't transfer over the older ones (I'll see if I can dig them up later because they really show consistently excellent matches year to year). If accepted, I would call the admissions office to see if they can send you an excel file with the older matches if you want to see them while making your school choice.
Personally I think a match list is a much more accurate measure of a school's quality than the U.S. News rankings because the formulas used to create rankings put far more emphasis on funding mechanisms than anything I'm comfortable with (translation: easily manipulated by shifting numbers around on an institutional balance sheet). That's just a personal preference though.